Family
by reading
Summary: After Family Feud. It's possible I have some issues with Mary.


_Family_

xxxx

Tag for "Family Feud"

xxxx

Sam turned from staring at the ceiling to stare at the clock. 3:22 a.m. Twenty minutes since he'd last checked. Twenty-six minutes since the time before that. He sighed and sat up.

The conversation with Mom had not gone well. She'd been determined to sway Dean and him to her perspective on the British Men of Letter, but Dean's face had not altered in the ten minutes she'd tried before giving up, and Sam himself had barely been able to pay attention to her argument in light of the horror-story memories from his time with one of their members suddenly playing in his mind.

"Well," she'd said, apparently finally cluing into the fact that Dean's stony face meant she wasn't getting anywhere. "We can talk again in the morning, I guess." She'd been obviously disappointed. "Now's probably not a great time to get into it."

Dean hadn't responded, but Sam had managed a, "Yeah, okay. See you tomorrow," to her retreating back.

"Awesome," Dean had muttered under his breath. Then his eyes had flicked to Sam. "You okay?"

Sam had known that Dean would recognize the insincerity of his smile, but he'd quirked one anyway, lowering his eyes to the computer. "Yeah." He'd glanced at his brother, then back down. "I'm fine."

Dean had blown out through his nose. "Right." But he'd patted Sam's shoulder and left the room. Abandoning the burgers and beers on the table where their mother had set them.

Sam had tried reading for a while, had had a beer – or three – of the six pack their mother had offered, had watched the most mind-numbingly boring documentary he could find on Netflix, but still hadn't been able to sleep. Inevitably, the pain and fear and humiliation of that time in the basement intruded on his thoughts, making sleep elusive.

Now he got out of bed, giving up. He'd make himself some coffee and a sandwich and lose himself in research.

The hall outside the bedroom was dark, but the light sliding out from under the door of Dean's room made it easy to see down the corridor to the kitchen.

Sam hesitated. The light didn't mean his brother was awake; Dean fell asleep with the light on fairly often. Then he heard the sound of steel on a whetstone.

Sam tapped lightly even as he pushed Dean's door open. "Hey."

Dean looked up from his task. "Hey."

"I couldn't sleep. Thought I'd make a sandwich." Sam moved into the room and sat on Dean's bed. "You want one?"

Dean went back to sharpening his knife, eyes on the blade, but attention, Sam knew, on his brother. "I'm good," Dean said.

"Yeah?" Sam asked it distractedly, not really a question of Dean's assertion, just an automatic response. Because he knew – they both knew – it wasn't true.

Sam pulled his feet up onto the bed, sitting cross-legged, elbows on his knees, head hanging. He let the swish-swish of the blade over the stone ease the tension in his shoulders, zoning out a little as the familiar, hypnotic rhythm continued.

It took him a couple of seconds to realize Dean had stopped.

Sam looked up, blinking a little dazedly, to find Dean watching him. There was a heavy moment of silence between them, and Sam could feel the weight of Dean's unhappiness and disappointment in that space. Dean's gaze left his brother.

"We can't work with them," he said.

Sam didn't hesitate. "I know."

Dean looked at him. "Not even for her," he said.

It felt for a minute like he couldn't breathe, but Sam said it again. "I know."

Sam knew that their mother's lack of care about Sam's suffering at the hands of the British Men of Letters had likely been the tipping point for his brother. Sam had felt Dean next to him, had felt the _air_ around Dean shift as Sam had stuttered out the torture they'd inflicted on him, had noted the stiffening, the imperceptible-to-anyone-but-Sam change in Dean's stance, when Mary hadn't responded.

And Sam knew Mary hadn't noticed. The fact that their mother had continued to try to talk them into joining her had told Sam that for all her forced familiarity – and when could she even have learned that Dean had a Face, Sam wanted to know – their mother didn't know her son at all. Because for Dean, Sam's pain had settled the matter. The same way it would have settled it for Sam. Evidently, the same couldn't be said for their mother.

"Amara said I'd given her what she needed most, so she was going to give me the same," Dean said into the stillness that had fallen.

Sam nodded. Dean had told him this before.

"And when Mom showed up, I thought…," he trailed off. "I thought…."

Dean lapsed into silence for a long beat, but Sam didn't feel the need to prompt him.

"How can _this_ ," he finally rasped, "be what I needed? What _either_ of us needed?"

Sam shook his head, felt his eyes sting. He'd tried so hard. So hard to be what his mother had wanted, what she needed. "I don't know," he admitted.

"And I didn't… I didn't expect her to be some kind of June Cleaver, you know? I _didn't_."

"I know," Sam said. And he did. For all the fact that he'd chided Dean for that very reason, Sam had never thought that had been at the heart of Dean's hurt.

"But I thought… I thought she'd at least _like_ us, or something. Like she might want to spend time with us or get to know us," Dean said bitterly.

"Yeah," Sam agreed softly. "I tried, you know? To be what I thought she'd want me to be. To give her space and… be understanding?" Sam snorted, shaking his head again. "I guess I thought if I just didn't push her or make any demands on her that maybe… that maybe then she'd like me." He looked at Dean and couldn't help the laugh. "How pathetic is that?" he asked. It was like saying it out loud only emphasized the absurdity of what he'd thought.

Dean smiled in response, but not, Sam could tell, because he agreed. "It's not pathetic, man, to want your mother to like you. It's normal. What's not normal, as far as I've been _told_ , anyway, is to have to try to convince your mother of that."

Sam gave a rueful grin. "Yeah."

They sat for a while, and Sam thought it was actually kind of freeing to admit those expectations and hopes out loud. He'd thought—they'd both thought—that Mary's return had meant they'd gotten their mother back. But in every way that mattered, they hadn't.

When Dean had asked Mary where it left them – when she was willing to work with the people who had tortured Sam and her sons were not – their mother had said, "Family." But, and this was one of the hardest things Sam had ever had to come to terms with, Mary really wasn't their family. Not in the way he and Dean had come to define that term, anyway.

Sam looked at Dean, wondering if his brother had come to the same conclusion. Or if he'd reached that conclusion long before.

Dean met Sam's eyes. "We don't owe her anything, Sammy," he said quietly.

Sam drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly.

He nodded. "I know."

xxxx


End file.
